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Lye shook his head, sunlight feathering his lashes. “Caly’s not part of the network.” He stopped outside a dilapidated shopfront, gave me a once-over, and frowned. “Could you stoop a little? Your posture gives you away.” Then he pushed the door open.

The smell of mildew scratched my nostrils as we entered a bleak little shop lined with jars of suspicious solutions. The woman behind the counter glared between us, then spoke in a language I recognized as Bormian.

Lye swaggered forward, his sentences rolling out as smooth as butter.

In accordance with rule one—No talking to the locals—Keil and I hung back, the heat of his sun-warmed skin radiating against my side.

“When did Lye first learn to speak Bormian?” I whispered.

“Around the time he learned to speak everything else. Lye was born into a wealthy merchant family, and his father was strict in his schooling. So of course, Lye rebelled by translating for lawbreakers in the underground network. It’s how he amassed all his contacts.”

“Are you one of those contacts?”

Keil shook his head, smirking. “I’ve been burdened with him since childhood; we shared the same tutors. Besides, Lye is more diplomatic with his contacts than he is with me.”

That much became obvious as I watched the woman slowly soften under Lye’s easy charm. I was studying him, fascinated and impressed, when I noticed a little figurine on the counter: a crowned woman, whose sorrowful expression inexplicably roused my curiosity.

“Queen Piper,” Keil explained, noticing my gaze.

My throat tightened. Queen Piper was the Wielder whose husband had tortured her into becoming his weapon. The woman Erik probably wanted to turn me into.

“Rheya didn’t finish the story,” Keil said quietly. “When Piper was forced into battle against Saxon, he noticed her dullroot scars. Enraged at what a Wholeborn man had done to her, Saxon laid down his weapons. And when he found her husband cowering during battle, he offered Piper the killing blow. She remained at Saxon’s side during the Great War but became more withdrawn with each victory he claimed. She eventually ended her own life, just to rid herself of the burden of power.”

I shivered, unnerved by the tale. Then my ears pricked up. “Something’s wrong.”

Keil frowned. “You understand Bormian?”

“My best friend mostly taught me the swearwords. But I recognized that word. It means danger.”

Keil’s frown deepened as the woman crouched. The clack of a hatch sounded, and we rounded the counter to find a staircase leading down into the basement. The raucous sound of workers drifted up with the smell of metalwork and musk.

With Lye at the helm and Keil at my back, we descended.

“Problem?” Keil asked when we were out of the woman’s earshot.

“She’s being extra cautious,” Lye explained. “There have been robberies in the area.”

“Not unusual for the Coal Quarter.”

“This is different. The thieves have been targeting specific places: documents offices, clinics, even private homes. They leave valuable belongings and take worthless items. The citizens are unsettled, but going to the authorities would expose them to unwanted scrutiny.”

Lye’s voice quieted as we reached the lower level. A huge workspace sprawled around us—a sea of muscled shoulders steaming in the heat. Hammers thwacked and saws scraped, and as I saw large, glassy sheets passing through the workforce, my fingers drifted toward the compass in my hip bag. I didn’t need to see these specimens under sunlight to know they must have been dayglass.

But as we weaved into the room, a shattering sound drew my attention to a pile of little glass shards. I leaned toward Keil, doubting my theory. “I thought dayglass was unbreakable.”

“It is,” he murmured. “But some of these sheets are embedded with objects, either for safekeeping or display purposes. And embedding an object within dayglass creates a weakness in its structure, seen in a tiny discoloration under sunlight.” He nodded to the man who’d shattered the sample, and I shuddered, noticing the iridescent shine of a eurium pickaxe in his hand. Eurium was the material that could slice through specters with exceptional force, rendering Wielders debilitated. “If you strike embedded dayglass with a eurium blade at the point of weakness,” Keil said, “you can break the unbreakable.”

Lye suddenly strode ahead, toward a slender young man leafing through documents.

“Raff!” Lye startled him with a hearty smack on the back, then continued in a breathy, unfamiliar language.

“It’s Werlish,” Keil whispered in explanation. “From one of the islands.”

I listened, enraptured, but Raff didn’t contribute to the conversation. His pale, tapered face remained cold as he looked between us, the lantern light glistening over his leather jacket and low auburn ponytail.

“What is this?” he asked, a slight accent curling the words.

“My acquaintances were inquiring about Caly,” said Lye, readopting the common tongue.